Ask HN: Allowance for kids?

> The point is to provide the necessary conditions for a successful adult to form.T

+1000

When I grew up it was routine for children to deceive their parents, especially about stuff like friends, smoking, drugs, drinking, sex etc. The assumed parental answer was always no so if you did any of that stuff you had to hide it. It was amazingly easy, we (four brothers) lead our secret lives and the parents mostly had no idea. There are problems with this: if the child gets in a bind there is no way they can ask for advice or help; if the parent finds out and overreacts badly it can seriously damage the relationship. I have a stepfather who I've never contacted since leaving home partly due to this.

Raising our son my wife and I agreed (mostly) that there is no practical way to completely control a _person_ and that trying to do so would just make him hide things from us. We thought the best we could do was to try to instill decent values and good judgment and to avoid useless opposition. This was a bit scary sometimes, "good judgment" and "14 year old boy" are not an obvious combination. He has turned out really well. It may have been just good luck, but I like to think that we avoided a lot of the mistakes our own parents made and that it helped.

As for allowance, we tried to pick a reasonable basic amount for the age and set no conditions. He could earn extra by doing extra work around the house. We also set up "Bank of Dad" where he could save money and get a good return. Learning how to make choices was definitely part of the plan.

Chores were not optional but were not tied to allowance. This was not completely satisfactory as he often delayed chores more than we liked unless cajoled into it somehow. I do this too sometimes.

With the caveat that they're not quite adults yet (eldest is 16) so there are no actual results to this experiment...

The children get regular money put into their accounts. We don't put many restrictions on what they spend it on. We take the approach (with this as well as internet access etc) that we trust them until they prove us wrong then we will stomp on them from a great height. Touch wood not much stomping so far.

They have assigned chores that are not directly connected to the money. I guess if they didn't do their chores we could pull some money but TBH there are better levers.

Although some of the chores are there just so they participate in the household (taking out bins/recycling etc), we also require them to make lunch/dinner or go shopping for the family periodically. The main reason is so that they're reasonably self sufficient when they eventually fly/get pushed from the coop.

None of them actually earn money yet (as in from outside family and friends) although only the eldest would be technically legal. He does have a regular job in the voluntary sector which gives him most of the discipline skills having a job entails.

I would say that they're all fairly aware of the cost of things. I'm not so convinced that they're sufficiently aware of the value of things. Maybe that's hard to do unless you've either genuinely lived on your earnings or struggled for money.

Growing up I initially had tiny regular allowance, which gradually became tied to specific weekly chores & subsequently bigger. As parent myself now I think approach works well, as it balances "I'm giving you this $ because I love and support you" and "hard work should be rewarded"

I don't have kids yet, but I just wanted to thank OP for starting such an interesting thread. Definitely bookmarking for future reference.

The current/saving and % of travel is a very interesting approach! I'm assuming that the numbers represent your monthly allowance?